


setting moon

by sclerant (rufusrant)



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, Late at Night, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 12:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufusrant/pseuds/sclerant
Summary: George stays up to finish a terrible botany paper, and Ringo is good company.
Relationships: George Harrison/Ringo Starr
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	setting moon

**Author's Note:**

> i am no botanist. but CelesteFitzgerald is, and a big thank you to her pulling up the science to help me out here! love you mate!

George doesn’t work well after staving off. He’s been at his paper for hours and still nothing changes the fact he’s got less than ten hours for it. His wits have left him, he’s alone with endless cups of coffee and his notes and his monster of a binder. 

Until he isn’t. 

At the call, barely ten minutes from it, Ringo appears at half-past eleven, laden with a supper of aloo paratha and black chai at the door. For this George is so thankful he unmasks him and kisses and kisses him before he can even get in. 

“What a welcome,” Ringo smirks. “How’re you?”

“Shite,” the thought of work weighs the world. “Whole lotta shite.”

“Shite,” Ringo agrees. “So how ‘bout you eat this for me first?”

They have a slap-up midnight picnic on George’s bedroom floor, where he’s set up his study camp. There’s barely any room to sit. George kicks his binder aside and almost knocks over his makeshift platter of books. Ringo skids on loosened sheets and nearly floods the room with spilled chai. The alarm clock atop the cluttered desk beeps twice for the new day. 

George groans. 

_ “Eat,” _ Ringo insists. “How many hours ye got left?”

“Seven.”

“Fuckin’ what?” Ringo picks diagrams and scraps of sketchbooks off the bed. “Tha’s bloody murder!”

“ ‘s me own fault.”

“Now don’t ya go ‘bout sayin’ that!”

“It _ is,” _ George pouts. He folds a disc of paratha and stuffs it in. “Thought I’d had it in the bag—”

“Aight, that's it, I’m helpin’ ye.” And Ringo finds his way to the edge of his encyclopedia. “As...ter… tera-cee-aye tarax… acum.”

“Dandelions.”

“Okay,” he sits and flits through the sheaf of pages with his thumb. “How much more you gotta read?”

“That’s not it,” George sighs. “Me paper’s on fungi.”

“Ah. _ Fun.” _

“Hah.”

Together they clink glasses of chai. 

* * *

At one AM Ringo has helped sharpen all of George’s drawing pencils. He makes some laugh how if he’d known, he would’ve loaned George his own set of professionals and his special eraser, not like he’s busy using it now with his graphics job and why the long face baby? 

George reminds him with a smudged  _ boop  _ to the nose that he’s no pro. 

“Show-off.”

“Exacto,” Ringo swats, and hand-feeds him another piece of paratha. “But you’d still have good pencils.”

* * *

At two, Ringo puts on the Taylor Swift album George will never admit he likes. She’s more acoustic than she’s ever been and its everything George wants  _ his _ songs to sound like, but for now he’s stuck sketching hymeniums and can’t for the life of him get it right or keep his eyes open. 

More coffee is brewed in a flash; and Ringo steps in to help. He copies the reference picture perfectly on first try to George’s groan and stretching and his attempt to hit the skip button on the ipod with his toes.  He sends Taylor flying into a stack of dossiers, toppling them from their tower and down to the floor.

“Oops!” Ringo startles.

“Look what ye made me do,” George says to himself. And Ringo snorts more heartily than the joke deserves.

* * *

Three AM. Four AM. Somewhere near _five_ AM they’re both flat on the floor, Ringo still astonishingly awake with music pounding his ears and George lying with his laptop on his side. The night from the window is as black as tar through his blind a cool breeze makes it  _ clack _ every time it hits the windowsill. 

“Ye done, luv?” comes the question. 

George doesn’t answer. He knows he’s failed. There’s too much research missing. Things he still hasn’t sketched. 

“George?”

George can’t say a word. His chest is too heavy, and the sight of Ringo mirroring him sitting up so shakily eats at him with teeth. For all that he’s done for him, bringing a supper he _can’t bloody eat_ just for George to know that he cares, drawing his homework, tidying the files and swimming towards him across this torrid sea of papers, George feels like he’s sold Ringo terribly short. 

“Georgie,” Ringo says, full of fondness, bumping against him at the hip. “ ‘s _okay,_ ya know. How is it?”

“...I don’t know,” George sighed. His forehead meets the hard cap of Ringo’s knee. “ ’m sick of it.”

Quiet settles over for a moment. But Ringo huffs: “I’m sick of it too,” and lifts George’s head so he can plant kisses on him. He plants a whole row of them, soft saplings, down the column of his neck.

He’s ascent of spice and he asks for nothing, and for once all the midnight oils burn bearable.

* * *

It’s six, God damn them, because George can’t keep time right. They’ve used the loo and Ringo’s cleared off the last of botany debris so he can put George in bed and be done with the day. 

Or maybe it’s not so, as Ringo fluffs George’s pillow and covers him with the blanket and hums to him a tune about a heart of gold. The waft of the window blind cuts ribbons of light all across the room, and Ringo catches it all with his rings and the gleam of his eyes and George loves him so enormously his guilt grows tenfold. 

“It’s okay,” Ringo keeps saying. But he then tucks himself in with him at last.  Kiss after kiss is lavished to lull him to sleep, but George is so full he can’t stop his eyes from watering. 

“Oh no, no...” Ringo holds his face and coos, and bug all if it’s seven or eight or past tomorrow’s tea, because George wants Ringo caressing him like this forever. His rings are cooled and silvery. 

“Are you staying?” he asks.

“Course I am,” Ringo replies, aghast, and wraps his arms around George’s neck. All was better. “What d’you take me for?”

George hums in his pretence to ponder. “A... very big octopus.”

“A very big _ what _ now?”

“I said what I said.” Their legs tangle with the sheets and their knees mix and thump. Ringo squeezes his eyes shut as he opens up into a large yawn, but when he comes back he looks at George and George sees all the light. Finally, does he feel truly peaceful. 

He nestles another gentle peck to Ringo’s lips. His eyes are still wet, but he thinks of only warmth and the brightest of blues as he slips into the serenest of sleep. 


End file.
